Snapshots from Eternity
by Alara Rogers
Summary: A collection of short ficlets, from Q's POV, about various things that have happened to him or that he's done in his life. Note that individual ficlets may contain the energy being equivalents of sex or violence; energy beings are sufficiently unlike humans that it shouldn't get an M rating for that, but check the warnings for individual chapters if such things would disturb you.
1. No

_Author's Note: This is a collection of prompt-based ficlets from Q's POV. Some of them may contain sex or violence, at least the energy being equivalents thereof; check warnings at the top of each individual chapter. Also, see below for table of contents, which has summaries of the ficlets._

* * *

**Prompt: No**

He had everything planned out. It was more than slightly ridiculous that it should have come to this, that he should be depending on a mere mortal for anything whatsoever, but strictly speaking it was the human's fault that he was in this situation. He wouldn't have _been_ so desperately lonely, so bored and unhappy, that he would _need_ to stoop to asking to join a crew full of mortals, if the human hadn't thwarted his attempt to prove to the Continuum that he could still construct a brutal, impassable test by, well, passing his test. Or getting his weaker-willed crewman to pass it, anyway.

Okay, so strictly speaking the Continuum told him to take a hike because he'd never been supposed to offer the powers of the Q to Riker in the first place, so maybe the fact that Picard had kept Riker from accepting was a moot point, but Q was pretty sure that had he succeeded, it would have been a _fait accompli_ and his political enemies in the Continuum wouldn't have had quite so much ammunition. Now they were debating his fate in a closed session, and he wasn't allowed to return to the Continuum until they summoned him, and he was... not worried, of course, he was a Q and the Q were never worried. Nothing he'd done merited a _severe_ punishment. He'd get another slap on the wrist. He was sure of it. Well, pretty sure. Which, given his nigh-omnipotence, was better than absolute certainty from a human anyway. But that wasn't the point.

He was _bored._ And... alone. The Q were never supposed to be alone. If he chose to leave the Continuum for centuries at a time because they were boring as mud, that was his call, but the fact that he wasn't _allowed_ to go back was galling. And it was all Picard's fault, so really, the human owed it to him to give him someplace to go... somewhere he could feel wanted, even if only because of the value his powers could bring the mortals.

The truth was, he actually had respect for this tiny mortal. Picard had defeated him twice now. Okay, the Farpoint test had been maybe easier than it needed to be, since Q had not paid as much attention as he should have to the fact that one of the descendants of humanity he'd put on trial was actually half-Betazoid and a fully functioning empath... but offering a human omnipotence should have been a slam dunk. The species had proven in the past, time and time again, that they weren't mature enough to understand how immature they were, and they'd never turned down offers like that before. The fact that *this* human not only understood the danger, that choosing to become omnipotent would have destroyed Riker's humanity, but actually managed to persuade Riker to _give up godhood_... oh, that was impressive. And then he'd beaten down the Nagilum with nothing more than the power of his words.

This was a mortal who could defeat Powers. Had defeated Q himself, and others as well. And Q wanted to be part of his team, since the Continuum had told him to get lost. He wanted... what? He wasn't sure, but it would start with being important to this mortal, being someone the human relied on. Belonging to him, because he couldn't belong to the Continuum at this very minute and it was hurting more than he'd dreamed possible. Maybe, once the mortal said "yes" and accepted him as part of his crew, Q would show him the danger of the Borg. After all, since those two human idiots and their tiny offspring had gone chasing the Borg and gotten themselves assimilated, humanity was pretty high on the Borg's "to assimilate" list, and only their distance from the Delta Quadrant had saved them so far. The Borg were sniffing around, capturing colonies near the Federation's Neutral Zone with the Romulans. If the humans weren't warned, they'd surely be assimilated. They had no hope if Q didn't help them.

The only problem was, Q had promised to stay out of the path of humanity forever. But that really wasn't fair. He'd been going to get Picard to go back on that bet, let him out of it, and then the Continuum had yanked him home prematurely to chew him out for several months in human terms. If the Continuum hadn't intervened, he wouldn't have a bet he couldn't work around to deal with. And Q's own ethics prevented him from welching on a bet completely, even with a pathetic mortal. And he couldn't mind-control the guy, not without feeling like an utter loser, or make him forget the bet completely... So he altered the human's memories, making him think that he'd promised to leave the ship and crew alone rather than to leave humanity alone. Something he could work around. And he felt bad about that, but... he was so bored, really. If he couldn't talk to Picard then he couldn't get Picard to accept him as part of the crew, and he couldn't think of anything else he was allowed to do that he might actually want more.

He kidnapped the human, blackmailing him into granting him permission to come back to the ship to discuss what Q really wanted. When he got there, he discovered his El-Aurian nemesis, much to his dismay... but he wasn't going to let her interfere either. He made his case, which he thought was unassailable. Surely Picard was intelligent enough to recognize how useful Q could be.

Picard said no.

"Simply speaking, we don't trust you."

Stung, but trying to hide it, because the only thing more pathetic than actually letting a mortal hurt his feelings was letting that mortal *see* that his feelings were hurt, Q said, "Oh. Well, you may not trust me, but you do *need* me. You're not prepared for what awaits you."

"How can we be prepared for that which we do not know? But I do know that we are ready to encounter it."

Q's eyes narrowed. Picard's calm, *smug* assertion that he and his crew and his inferior little species were ready for anything was absurd in the face of what Q knew about the Borg. "Really?"

"Yes, absolutely. That's why we're out here," Picard said.

Q stared him down. "You judge yourselves against the pitiful adversaries you have encountered so far. The Romulans, the Klingons. They are nothing compared to what's waiting. Picard, you are about to move into areas of the galaxy containing wonders more incredible than you can possibly imagine, and terrors to freeze your soul. I offer myself as guide only to be rejected out of hand."

Riker - who had, in fact, come within minutes of accepting Q's offer, who had only refused because the hold Picard had over his emotions was greater than his ambition - said, "We'll just have to do the best we can without you."

"What justifies that smugness?" Q snapped.

"Not smugness, not arrogance," Picard said, which was laughable, because it was both. "But we are resolute, we are determined, and your help is not required."

_Then you'll all die,_ Q thought, furious, and for a moment, thought of leaving them all to it, just letting the Borg have them. But they would never realize in the moment of their destruction that they could have been saved if only they'd taken his offer. He wanted to rub Picard's nose in his own stupidity, wanted to _force_ him to recognize why what he'd just said was unutterably wrong-headed... why he never, ever should have said "no" to something Q had wanted so very badly.

"We'll just have to see how ready you are," he said, and with a thought and a snap of his fingers, cast them across light-years, to the edge of Borg space.

_Let's see exactly how much you don't need me now, mon capitaine,_ he thought.

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**Table of Contents**: Because I can't put a summary that covers all of these ficlets on this fic, I'm including one here at the bottom of the first ficlet.

1. No: Based on "Q Who?" Picard says no to Q.

2. The Dying God: So Q has a conversation with a harvest god in a bar.

3. I Want For A Child: A scene from the Q war. Q goes to rescue Amanda, gets rescued himself, and has a brilliant idea on how to end the war. At least he thinks it is. Contains violence (against energy beings) and non-explicit energy being sex.

4. Scared: Q is attacked by five Q who want to rewrite his mind. While the word is not used except in the warning, this is essentially the Q equivalent of rape, and may be disturbing.

5. Gratitude: A "Deja Q" missing scene. Data's in sickbay after saving Q's life, and Q finds this unbearable.


	2. The Dying God

**Prompt: The Dying God**

"Let me get this straight," Q said to the entity sitting across from him in the bar.

Actually that isn't accurate at all. To say they were in a "bar" implies that they were in a physical, matter-based location where beings consumed alcoholic beverages in order to alter their mental states. The two entities in question, being non-corporeal, couldn't have been affected by alcohol even if there had been any there, which there wasn't, because the location they were actually in was also non-corporeal, and alcohol, being made of matter, could not have existed there. Neither of them were sitting, because sitting implies the existence of legs and a posterior, and neither of them were speaking English, or any language humans could have comprehended, or, in fact, any language at all, really... as beings of thought made real in energy, they communicated in pure concepts.

They were actually floating together in an anomalous region of extra-dimensional space whose unique properties reflect the thought energies generated by sentient beings back at them, producing an echo/interference effect which is somewhat disorientg, but in a pleasant way, to entities who are normally incapable of experiencing disorientation, thus producing a slight impairment that many entities find disinhibiting and relaxing, as well as a somewhat euphoric sensation. The location is popular among Beings of Power for precisely that reason, and is often filled with entities of different species, all of whom are generally powerful enough to be worshipped by mortals as gods, relaxing and socializing with one another.

In other words, they were both in a place where beings like them often went to hang out, converse, and get buzzed. A bar, by any other name.

And the information that Q transmitted to his temporary companion, which was expressed conceptually rather than in words, translates more literally as "response to your statement: amusement/mild disbelief/slightly less mild disapproval (embedded concept: suspicion that your concept was communicated as fiction for purposes of generating amusement) (embedded concept: if the concept you communicated was true, I strongly suspect that you are a moron): Request more detailed information to clarify that my comprehension of your concept matches your transmission." However, Q himself frequently argues that when attempting to communicate with alien beings about something that happened to him, it is much better to express the events in metaphors that accurately communicate how he perceived the event rather than attempting to accurately render an actual description of the event. Using language that closely describes his actual means of communicating with other entities like himself makes Q sound much more alien to the beings he's talking to than using language that assumes that he is "normal", however the people he's talking to perceive "normal" to be, and translating his experiences into emotionally similar experiences they might have in order to make himself appear "normal" to their frame of reference.

In other words, Q lies all the time to make himself sound less alien than he actually is. It's a Q thing. They all do it. Except for the ones that don't, but mortals never get a chance to talk to them, largely because they're completely incomprehensible.

So. Q was in a bar, sitting next to another entity, and he said, "Let me get this straight..." because Q never describes his own experiences to mortals in terms of what actually happened, and that's the best metaphor to use to describe what happened in terms that mortals easily understand.

"Let me get this straight. You actually _die_? Every solar revolution on your worshippers' planet? For a third of that solar revolution? How does that even work?"

(It should be pointed out that Q, being a Q, has access to the Q Continuum, a repository of knowledge which contains damn near everything there is to know, and therefore almost never actually has to ask a question of someone in order to find out the answer. However, as an entity whose primary function in the Continuum is to gather knowledge about other sentient beings, Q prefers to ask questions even if he already knows the answer, let alone if he would otherwise have to look up the answer, because the way the being he is questioning chooses to answer him tells him as much or more about that being as the actual answer to the question would.)

The other being, who had a name that would be transcribed into the phonemes of human speech as "Haggoth", said, "Yeah, it's the whole harvest god thing. When the weather gets cold and my people can't grow crops anymore, I die, and I come back in the spring when there's enough warmth to support plant growth."

"What exactly do you mean by 'die'? Typically speaking, death's generally pretty final."

"Well, I suppose you could call it sleep. Have you ever gone to sleep?"

Q shuddered slightly. "Once. And once was enough." Most Q don't actually have personal experience of sleeping, though of course the Continuum database contains everything any being would ever want to know about the state or the experience of sleep. Q's personal experience came from having been Human for close to an entire day (day being the amount of time it takes the planet Earth to spin on its axis, given that that's the planet Humans are from), but it wasn't an event he particularly liked to think about. "If you ask me, I don't see any difference between sleeping, and temporarily dying."

"I suppose there isn't much difference, but generally, when mortals sleep, it's possible to wake them. What happens is that as it gets cold, and the plants die, I start to experience a sensation of cold and torpor myself. And then I crystallize into stasis. They have a feast day to celebrate my death, and they burn effigies of me, and then in the springtime they have a huge party to celebrate my re-awakening. And when I hear them calling me, when I _feel_ their worship and their love..." Haggoth shivered. "There's nothing like it. You're missing out, I tell you. The worship and adoration of a large tribe of worshippers is just the most incredible high."

"Except for the part where it kills you. Every solar revolution."

Haggoth shrugged. "You know, we've all got our little vices. I may die all winter, but I've never had my fellows gang up on me and turn me into a mortal because I couldn't stop poking random mortals with sticks."

Q scowled. "That was _one day_. You're talking about a third of your existence, as long as you remain in their linear time frame!"

"It's not like I'm actually going to stay dead."

"Except if all your worshippers get wiped out by an asteroid while you're dead. Then who's going to wake you up?"

"My pantheon's got my back. Sarass - you know, my consort? She'd never let that happen."

Q wouldn't have been nearly so confident of that. Given how often mortals' dying god/planet mother nature cults ended up elevating the dying god above the mother goddess when they went patriarchal and started trying to assert their dominion over nature, if he were the feminine consort/mother goddess of a harvest/dying god, he'd be seriously tempted to just never let his consort wake up, otherwise sooner or later the dying god of a humanoid race often ended up supplanting the mother goddess in worshippers, which translated into power. And more importantly, translated into the intensity of the high that entities of thought got from being worshipped. But then, he didn't know Sarass, mother goddess of the Pasho people on a planet whose people had no idea it even was a planet and therefore just called it "world", and he didn't know Haggoth particularly well either. He'd just run into the guy in a bar and struck up a conversation, because that was what he did.

"I can't imagine any buzz you could get off worship being worth _dying_ for, even temporarily. Can't you just stay awake?"

Haggoth shook his head. "If I don't align with their perception, the worship doesn't align properly against my psychespace, and the hit's not nearly as good. I could stay awake if I really wanted to. And you know, one of these centuries I'll probably quit. It's just _incredible_, though." He took a deep draught of his drink (which is actually to say that he spread himself thinner and wider to receive more reflective thought energies, so as to take a rapid pulse of disorienting and disinhibiting sensation, but if he'd been mortal and he'd been in a bar, he would have taken a drink to get the same effect.) "I'm kind of surprised at you, Q. Everyone says you're a hedonist who'll do anything for fun, but apparently you don't want to be worshipped? Sounds like prudery to me. How'd you get to be such a joy-killing stick-in-the-mud?"

"The part I'm hung up on is where the joy comes in, if you have to _die_ to get it."

"Man, you're totally stuck on that. It's not like I _die_ die, like I'm mortal and I'm going to rot in the ground, right? I'm coming back. So I'm eternal, so who cares if I sleep through the winter for the next few hundred years? You're just jealous because no one actually worships you."

In fact Q worked hard to make sure that no one actually worshipped him, or that if they did, they worshipped him cautiously as a feared and unpredictable trickster god who might well do literally anything whatsoever, so that the attitudes and beliefs of mortals _never_ influenced him into becoming someone different. Most entities who were hooked on worship let it eat away at some part of their personality and reshape them into what their mortals wanted them to be, though admittedly he'd before never met an entity who was so deep into his addiction he let it kill him periodically. "If I actually wanted anyone to worship me, you might have scored a point with that, but I hate to tell you, that fell pretty flat. Jealous? Seriously? You're letting _mortals_ dictate to _you_. You're letting them transform you. You're actually letting them _kill_ you. I've met plenty of worship junkies before, but most of them manage not to let their mortals _kill_ them."

"Apollo."

Q snorted. "Suicide because you can't get your fix anymore's pathetic, it's true, but not the same thing."

Haggoth shrugged. "You don't have to like it. I enjoy the worship, and I don't really care if I have to die every winter for it. Dying doesn't hurt, and the worship feels _fantastic_. You really don't know what you're missing out on."

"I've slept before. If it means that I'm missing out on an experience like _that_, I will cheerfully miss out on being worshipped until the end of time."

"Well, that's your call. You do your thing and I'll do mine." Haggoth turned away from Q and started chatting up a different entity.

Beings of Power often irritated Q immensely, more than any mortal could possibly do. They _should_ be superior to mortals, and so often, they weren't. He flashed out of the bar, no longer willing to endure beings of natures like his own being intolerably inane. If he wanted to deal with stupidity, he could go find some mortals to play with.

As an afterthought he checked up on Haggoth's planet. The Q had access to much more of a range of temporal perceptions than most entities, having bound themselves to a completely separate timeline, so Q could see much more of the future than Haggoth could. An ice age was coming. If his worshippers didn't manage to invent science, which generally resulted in putting gods aside entirely, or manage to flee to the northern tropics, which would almost certainly cause them to give up their concept of a dying harvest god... then they'd either all die, or adapt to perpetual winter. And if winter came and never ended, one of these days Haggoth was going to go to sleep and never wake up.

Q _could_ warn the guy. But he wasn't going to. 


	3. I Want For A Child

Warnings: non-explicit energy being sex with significant age difference, somewhat graphic violence against energy beings (in other words, not human sex and not human blood and gore, but definitely the equivalents thereof.)

**Prompt: I want for a child**

"You look like crap," Q said to him.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Q retorted. "That's certainly going to keep morale up."

The other Q shrugged. "Any little thing I can do to help, buddy. What happened?"

The funny thing was that the other Q's offer of help was genuine, and the sarcasm he was coating it with was merely pro forma, the way the Q saved face with each other. Once upon a time, Q would have trusted this entity completely. Then the other being had gotten him thrown out of the Continuum. Yeah, he'd had the best of intentions, yes, he'd probably saved Q's life by doing it, and certainly, he was dedicated to Q's cause now. But it didn't change the fact that Q was never going to be able to show him an emotional weakness again if he had a choice. "The usual. Life during wartime. How have things been going here?"

"Badly," the other Q said. "The Youngest never came back from that scouting expedition she was going on, Q got ambushed and was killed, and we missed a chance to take out two of the enemy. This isn't going so well, is it?"

"It's not like we can exactly surrender at this point," Q pointed out.

"It's not like _you_ can. Or me. Some of our Q, though..."

"Nobody's defecting," Q said decisively, as if he could control the destinies of other Q through his will as easily as he could do to mortals. "Things are rough, but we're going to pull it together. We don't have an alternative, after all." He cast his attention outward, searching as far as the discontinuities would allow for the youngest Q. "She knows how to take care of herself. She can practically turn invisible and she's the fastest shot we've got."

"She's also the weakest. One shot that would just disable you or me would probably blast her to bits. I know you've got feelings for the kid, but... things are not looking good, Q. She should have been back by now."

"She's not dead," Q said, though it wasn't any more realistic a statement than his declaration that no one would defect was. "I'll go out and find her."

"That is not exactly the best idea you ever had. You spend too much time away from the rest of us. Has it ever occurred to you what a victory for them it would be if they took you out? You should have backup with you."

"I'm not a cult leader, I'm a Q. I appreciate getting some respect for once in my existence, don't think I don't, but you're all loyal to the cause, not to me. We all want freedom, Q. That's why no one's going to defect, and that's why it's not going to harm the cause if I get myself killed. But if I leave someone behind, someone who's done as much for the cause as the Youngest has... _that_ might do us harm. So I'm going to try to find her."

The truth was, he had to get away from the rest of the Q who were looking to him as some kind of leader. He'd just shot yet another Q, another sister he'd known for billions of years, and when she hadn't died, he'd had to shoot her again to disable her, and throw her in a pocket universe to suffer in isolation and powerlessness until the war was over and he could let her out. He hated her for putting him in a position where he'd had to kill a fellow Q or commit an atrocity on her, and he hated himself for picking the atrocity and even enjoying torturing her while he was doing it, and he hated the enemy for making him do this, for making him fight instead of just *giving* him what he wanted. What kind of idiocy led to beings committing murder to prevent change... in a society where death had held no sway for billions of years? Who shattered a unity in the name of preserving it? They were morons, sadistic ones at that. And his own people were idiots to look to him as any kind of leader.

He couldn't see any way out.

Since he couldn't sense Amanda, he knew she had to be on the other side of one of the discontinuities. He teleported as close as he could to the edge of one of them, and forced himself to cross, despite the pain it caused. This was a particularly large one, and he felt it ripping at him as he crossed it, tiny bits and pieces of himself pulled away down the well of nothingness, of not-Q-ness, caused by the deaths of so many Q. Amanda wouldn't be able to cross this one, not without help.

He needed her. Not just her skill, though it helped - who would have thought that raising a Q among humans would lead to her being so capable of wielding deadly force against other Q? He needed her certainty, her belief that he was doing the right thing to fight this fight, that he wasn't an abomination because he was capable of killing other Q. If she was dead... well, they were all expendable. He'd go on. But he might stop being able to fool himself that they could win.

The uncommitteds were blaming his faction, despite the fact that the other side had started the war, because he and his were the ones rebelling against the status quo, and if there had been a larger body of Q who'd wanted to shake up the status quo, he wouldn't be outnumbered now. And if they swung toward the enemy, his movement was dead. They didn't have the numbers. And the enemy was entrenched in their beliefs, and nothing about war or violence could possibly convince the uncommitteds that change and freedom were good things, so what was he supposed to do? Kill them all? Maybe he could, but what would that turn him and his followers into?

"What have we here?"

He redirected his attention and his focal point, rapidly, but it was too late. One of the enemy, hidden within the folds of the damage to the Continuum, was pointing a weapon at him, smirking. He couldn't possibly redirect his own weapon at the enemy Q before she could kill him.

_Well, Q, I guess you were right. I should have brought backup,_ he thought. Funny, he wasn't really afraid. If he died now, he'd never have to kill another Q, and he wouldn't have to see his friends and allies die for his failures. He felt nothing but resignation, almost even relief.

"No smart remarks? No pithy last words?" the other Q asked, mocking him.

"Why bother?" Q asked tiredly. "You're not exactly going to carry the story of my heroic final speech back to your team, are you?"

"That's right," she said. "I'll show them all the memory of your death... and that's all the memorial you'll ever get. Once this war is over, you and your kind will be _forgotten_, expunged from the memory of the Continuum."

Despair overwhelmed him, because she was probably right. That sounded exactly like what the enemy would do. To be killed was bad enough, but to be forgotten, excised from the memory of every Q... he closed his senses down because he didn't want to hear any more, and he didn't want to see his death coming. The weapons killed fast enough that he'd have only nanoseconds to know he was dead after she shot him; he didn't want more warning than that.

The local disruption of the Continuum caused by the weapon's firing rippled through him, and despite himself he screamed, even though a moment ago he'd thought he wasn't afraid of death, because here it was and he was dying now and... wait. There was no pain, and no disruption to his sense of self. Was he...?

A Q who tasted like the freedom faction touched him, even as he cautiously opened his senses again, and pulled him into an embrace. Clear, clean emotions, simplicity, freshness, youth. _"Amanda?"_

"Q! I thought she was going to _kill_ you! I never thought I'd be able to make that shot in time!"

Amanda wasn't dead. The enemy Q was. The two of them were standing in a puddle of her energies, her lifeblood, spread out over the landscape of the Continuum around them, soaking in and tearing new rips in the fabric of everything Q. Q shrank in on himself, the Q equivalent of collapsing to his knees. "Amanda," he said again, because he didn't have anything more coherent to say. He'd thought she was dead. He'd thought _he_ was dead.

He pulled them both down into the tiny space of folded Continuum that the enemy had been hiding in, before she'd come out with a gun to mock him, threaten him, and die at Amanda's hands. Another Q had just died because of his cause, another Q's energies were all over him and all over everything else, and he wasn't dead, and the young Q who'd saved him wasn't dead either. His emotions were in turmoil, and he needed her, needed the touch of another Q to stabilize him. She seemed to need him as badly, her fear and shock at seeing him facing death making her cling to him, push herself into him where she could feel his vitality, the energies of his life still coursing through him.

Their lovemaking was hurried, desperate, not the long, languid exchange of energies that the Q typically preferred but something almost violent, almost painful, on the verge of a mutual devouring rather than a sensuous exchange. This was only the second time Q had been with Amanda in this way, and while he was no longer the only Q she'd ever done this with, fighting a war hadn't exactly given her time for extensive experimentation; she was still very new to this, and very new to him, and he could lose himself for a few precious moments in the intensity of her emotions, in the novelty that absolutely everything had for her.

When they were done, she drew away from him, almost embarrassed - which she had every right to be; the Q had no taboos about sex, but they did about naked displays of emotion, and the kind of desperate, hungry merging the two of them had just flung themselves into was just not done, generally. Especially not without the context of an established, long-term romantic relationship. The Q shared casual pleasure with each other the way mortals might share tasty snacks or alcoholic beverages, but this had been much more raw and needy than the Q generally allowed themselves to experience with casual partners. "I, uh, what are you even doing out this way?"

"Looking for you, silly girl. Q's practically frantic with worry over you. I told him, you could take care of yourself, but he's worked himself into a terrible fret over you."

She laughed. "I'd kind of like to see that."

"Well, come on back with me and you will. You cover my back, I'll get you across the discontinuity and we'll return to camp."

"I was kind of wondering how I was going to get across that thing. Thanks."

They teleported together to the close edge of the discontinuity. He picked her up, enveloping her in his essence, not as he had when they'd come together frantically a few moments ago but simply shielding her with his own essence, and had a sudden disconcerting memory that wasn't even his, a flash of Amanda's mother and the memories she had left behind in the totality of the Continuum of holding this little entity when she was barely a spark inside a human body, and the overwhelming love and tenderness that Q had felt for her baby, love and tenderness that had led her to defy the Continuum, refuse to abandon her child and return home, and had resulted in her death.

The Q did not, generally speaking, love anyone like that. They were too jaded, too cynical, too damaged from an eternity of defending against each other. The Continuum didn't even *have* much of that love within it, as a trait. Perhaps if they did, they wouldn't be killing each other now. But it was something the Q could feel, a trait that did exist within them, because otherwise Amanda's mother couldn't have felt it.

And then he had it. He put her down on the other side of the discontinuity, stunned by a sudden revelation. The way he could win this war, without having to kill every one of the enemy, the way he could sway the uncommitteds to his cause and turn the weight of the entire Continuum against his enemy, the way he could ensure that the Continuum would change forever and never again be able to do this to one another.

"I have just had the most brilliant idea," he said.

"What?"

Any other Q would have made a sarcastic remark. Amanda was sincere, eagerly listening to him. Her naivete, her innocence, her weakness... the Q had been looking at her all wrong, all this time. She was strong enough to endure the ego of another Q without having to push back, without having to assert herself against the other. She was able to *believe* in another Q, in a positive future even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they'd all die. And two Q had loved her so much they had died for her, and she had come to the Continuum with a strength no other Q had, because no other Q knew themselves to have been loved so overwhelmingly, by anyone.

"They fear change, because change is death, and we haven't shown them any reason to think otherwise. But what else is change, Amanda?"

"Um... a good thing? I mean, you can't be alive without change, right? Stasis is death, too."

"Exactly! _Life_ is change. And what represents the potential of change within life better than new life?" He smiled at her broadly. "I know how we're going to win, now. We're going to show them that change isn't just death. Change is also _birth._"

"Um... how, exactly are you going to do that?"

"Change is birth, and birth is new potential. The remixing of traits, the introduction of new possibilities... how much have you brought to the Continuum, just by being raised by humans? How much, just from the fact that your parents made you, and loved you? That's the key, Amanda, that's the key. A *child*." He grinned. "I am going to have a baby."

"You're not _pregnant_, are you?" She sounded horrified.

He laughed, giddily. "Oh, dear heart. Don't worry, it doesn't work like that. Q sex doesn't result in reproduction, how else is it that your parents had to take human form to have you? And having a child with another Q isn't enough, anyway. You brought change to us by being raised by humans, but I'm going to take it a step farther. I'm going to have a child *with* a human."

"And that's going to end the war?"

She sounded skeptical. He sighed. "Look. We'll go back to camp and I'll explain it to everyone. But yes. It will end the war. I'm sure of it."

Because it had to. He didn't really have any hope of winning any *other* way, after all.

And he thought, for a moment, of the intense love Q had felt for her baby, and the fact that he'd never felt that way about anyone, and no one had ever felt that way about him... and the fact that he was killing his fellow Q, and it was tearing him apart, in the moments when he wasn't taking a sadistic joy in it, and he didn't want to be that Q. He didn't want to learn to love killing his own kind. Instead, he wanted to love one of his own kind, as overwhelmingly as Q and Q had loved Amanda.

A child. His child. A symbol of birth, of freedom leading to a future of change and potential and new things. And a Q he could love with all his heart. Yes. That was what he needed. That was the solution to everything.

Now he just had to convince the others.

* * *

_Notes: Based on the Q civil war from "The Q and the Grey". Also references prior fics "could turn and walk away or i could fire the gun" and "The Night The Day The War Began"._


	4. Scared

(Warnings: From a human perspective the things that happen in this story would be upsetting, but are too fantastical, too much unlike the reality humans live with, to trigger most people. From Q's own perspective, however, this ficlet deals with gang rape and attempted murder, and his emotional state conveyed in the ficlet will reflect that. Be forewarned.)

**Prompt: Scared**

Among the Q, stupidity is generally considered a crime deserving of death. So when the other Q surrounding him block him from teleporting, and the walls of the dimension around him thicken to keep him from fleeing even if he manages to break free, the first thing Q thinks is that this is his own fault for being stupid enough to trust Q.

Q - the one who lured him here - is an entity who despises Q, and the feeling is mutual... but Q has no problem with being hated. He rather enjoys it, in fact. And in the Continuum, two Q hating one another is not considered any kind of barrier to them exchanging pleasure - it ends up working more like a contest than any kind of intimacy, but it's a contest Q is good at, and whether you win or lose, you experience pleasure and the thrill of knowing that someone who doesn't even like you wanted you. So when the other Q approached him with an offer, he agreed, and agreed as well to take their pleasures into a private subdimension because he really didn't want the entire Continuum watching if he ended up losing the contest. It never occurred to him that he might be in danger. Q simply don't harm each other. Usually.

But the moment he materialized in the subdimension, four Q already there moved to block him from escaping, four Q who all also despise him. And now Q is trapped here, surrounded by five Q who hate him, and as strong-willed as he is he knows he can't fight off five other Q. He throws up the most powerful shield he can, anyway... but if they're here to kill him, it won't do him any good. The Q can destroy each other by focusing hatred and a will to annihilate against another Q, if they outnumber the other Q by enough, and five against one is more than enough. "Premeditation? Luring me off to my doom? Oh, the Continuum is going to throw the book at you guys," he says, projecting a flippant bravado he doesnt feel.

"Oh, we're not going to kill you," one of them says, the aura he projects sleazy and gloating. "We're just going to give you an attitude adjustment."

"You're such an asshole," another one of them says. "If you started spontaneously acting like a decent Q and made any attempt whatsoever to get along with the rest of us, the Continuum would be so thrilled with the change, they're not going to make an issue over what we had to do to you to get you to change."

"This is for your own good," the one who lured him here says, but his aura - the Q equivalent of his facial expression and body language - projects too much sadistic glee and perverse anticipation for Q to believe for a moment that he actually believes what he just said.

"No," Q says, scanning the dimension with every sense he has, looking for the tiniest chink in the walls of his prison, the tiniest weakness in the barrier they're holding around him. He shrinks in on himself to allocate more of his essence to his personal shields, the Q equivalent of putting out his hands in a useless defensive posture. "No, you can't do this. They'll throw you out of the Continuum. You can't hate me so much you want to destroy your own existences just to rewrite mine!"

"They won't throw us out of the Continuum," the one who'd called him an asshole said. "Like I said. They'll be so happy they don't have to deal with your bullshit and that you've become a half-decent Q, no one's going to worry about how you got that way."

One of the two who hasn't directly spoken to him grabs him, wrapping energies around him. Q throws all of his power into breaking free, but even as he pulls loose from that one, two others are on him, pinning him with their power. He screams for help, struggling wildly, but his screams echo against the walls of the pocket dimension - the whole point to pocket dimensions is that they isolate information from the rest of the Continuum. If he can't break the dimension's walls, no one outside this dimension will ever hear him, no matter how loudly he screams. The one who'd first grabbed him whispers, on a low channel that wouldn't have been heard by the rest of the Continuum even if there weren't a barrier in the way, "Don't worry, you'll thank us when we're done. You'll even enjoy it."

Q is still screaming, all the energy he has going into calling for help, fighting them off, keeping his shields up. It doesn't do him any good. Three Q holding him are more than powerful enough to keep him immobile and helpless no matter how hard he fights, and no one can hear him through the barrier. Desperately he focuses a narrow, almost microscopic point attack against the barrier, trying to at least get a message out through the dimension, to call for help. For a nanosecond, he triumphs, the pinpoint hole forming, but before he has a chance to use it to scream to the Continuum for help, the other two have grabbed and muffled him, and now all five are holding him and forcing their way through his shields, and he's screaming as hard as he can but he knows that it's just flowing into his attackers and stopping there. He stops screaming for help because there's no point, and pleads with the five Q pinning him instead, even though he's fairly sure that won't help either, because there's nothing else he can do. "No, no, please, you can't do this, please, you're wrong, the Continuum _will_ punish you for this, please don't do this to me, please..."

"Oh, shut up," one of the other Q says. "You think you're so special, your own individuality is so important. You're a damaged piece of shit who should never have been created as you are, and it's about time someone fixed you."

They're going to rewrite him into someone else.

It's the worst thing he can imagine, the worst thing any Q can do to another Q, and he would have preferred being hated to death to this. There'll be a Q in his place when they're done with him, but it won't be him - it'll be another Q, with his memories and his skills, but his essential ego, his personality, his sense of selfness, will be destroyed. He's going to be dead and there'll be another Q running around in the shell of his essence and his attackers may well be right, the Continuum might not even care. If they turn him into a zombie Q, a Stepford Q, a good little Q who never disagrees with the Continuum and always plays well with others and is properly obedient to authority, it's entirely possible that the Continuum will turn a blind eye to the obvious fact that other Q rewrote him by force, because they'll prefer him that way.

Q channels most of his energy to his shields, trying to keep the other Q out of him, but he can't fight off five of them indefinitely; the outer layer of his defenses crack open, and his captors flow into the outer edges of his essence, violating the boundaries of his selfhood. They're laughing, sharing information with each other as they identify the weaker points in his inner shields and push at him there, or just batter against them with raw force, cracking them and pushing their way further into him. The sensation of other Q inside his essence, their energies melding with his, normally feels good, but the force they're using to break his shields hurts, and the malice they feel toward him burns like acid would on a mortal's skin in every place they've penetrated him. He keeps struggling, frantically, keeps begging them not to do this, but he's beyond terrified because he knows it won't help.

And then they've broken through the last of his shields, and they're all the way inside him.

He has nothing private left, no part of him that's not merged with one of them, and they overlap through most of him, and it _hurts_. Quite aside from the pain they caused him when they tore through all his barriers, he's trying frantically, half-involuntarily to recoil away from their touch, but they're literally touching him everywhere, so he's ripping up his own essence inside in a useless effort to free himself from them, and he can't stop himself from doing it even though he knows it's hurting him and it won't help, and they don't care. They're enjoying this. He can feel their excitement, their pleasure - _they_ aren't merged unwillingly, so to them, this feels like a joining and not an invasion - their cruel enjoyment of their power over him. Each of them can keep a significant part of their selfhood out of the joining; because they outnumber him, they can overlap _him_ completely, hold all of him inside their own joining, while still leaving themselves enough that they remain individuals, and he can barely influence them. They aren't channeling their hatred into a weapon to burn and kill him, but the hatred exists, and is dominant in their emotions, so it's everywhere inside him and it burns, not badly enough to kill him but badly enough that it hurts horribly.

And they're in control of every part of him. He can't scream, can't struggle anymore, as much as he wants to, because they're intercepting his ego's commands to the parts of his essence that wield his powers, effectively paralyzing him. Inside, he's crying, terrified and in pain, but only his captors can hear him, because he can't send any signal outside of himself and he can't even control his own essence. They're laughing at him, enjoying his fear, the fact that they've broken him so thoroughly he can't even put up a facade of bravado anymore.

They start analyzing him, moving through his essence, pulling knowledge of him and his structure and his memories into themselves, and it would have felt delicious and depraved and exciting if it was a different five Q and he'd wanted this, but he hates this and he hates them and it hurts, it hurts so much, and the humiliation is worse than the pain and the terror is worse than the humiliation. His thoughts are reduced to a simple mantra of denial, "no stop no stop please stop please no please stop", and the despairing thread of knowledge weaving through it that he knows they won't stop no matter how desperately he wants them to. He can't compose the equivalent of Q words, coherent thoughtforms; they've cut him off from too much of himself, and he can't think straight anymore. There's nothing he can perceive but the feeling of his captors inside him, and the vicarious reflection of their perceptions because they've cut him off from all of his own external sensors. He's babbling, pure emotion, the Q equivalent of crying and even that only inside where only the Q tormenting him can hear it.

Then they start plotting out their changes.

He's as much Q as they are and they're part of him at this moment and he can feel their thoughts as much as they can feel his. He can see every change they want to wreak on him, every pattern of thought that they want to wrench out of its correct shape and remake it into the form they prefer. As clearly as they can, he can see the shape of the person they're going to turn him into, and he hates and despises that person as much as or maybe even more than he hates the five of them. They converse among themselves, discussing the changes they want to make, making suggestions and arguing as if he's merely a project to work on, a canvas to draw on, not a fellow Q. Periodically he pulls together enough of himself to beg again, but they completely ignore him, treating his pleas as additional data to be studied and modified instead of communication from a sentient being. He's nothing but an object to them right now. They're not even taking sadistic joy in his pain anymore; they're studying him and mapping their changes on his mind like he's a thing to create or re-create, not a person they've attacked and defeated, and that's actually worse than when they were enjoying his suffering and laughing at him.

If anyone could see him from the outside, anyone who wasn't currently violating him and working on re-making him, he would look catatonic and silent. Inside, he sobs brokenly, despairingly. He's completely defeated. He would do anything to stop this, but there's nothing he can do except watch in ever increasing terror as they map out who he's going to be as soon as they release the changes, as soon as they execute the plans they are drawing all over him. And he can't even scream.

Suddenly the walls of the dimension around them tear open, and a Q he thinks of as his annoying older sister is standing there. He can't even sense her himself, he can't feel anything outside his own essence, but his essence is completely permeated by five other Q and all of _them_ can see her. "What is going on here?"

It's a rhetorical question. As soon as she tore open the dimension, she must have learned exactly what's going on, because she would have automatically absorbed the information filling this dimension, the information that couldn't get through the walls and out to the main Continuum until she tore her way in. And now, every Q in the Continuum knows exactly what was going on, too.

The five release him and teleport, trying to run. It won't do them any good. What they did, what they tried to do, was one of the worst crimes in the Continuum, and while it might have been overlooked if they'd succeeded and everyone had preferred the new being that they would have made him into, the fact that he's still him gives the Continuum no motive to look the other way. And there is nowhere a Q can hide from the Continuum. They will be found, and they will either be exiled or outright executed.

His sister is at his side, not touching him, holding a light shield around him as he pulls his own shields back together. He's overwhelmed by gratitude, joy and relief that she's come to his rescue and appreciation for her not letting the entire Continuum see him raw and naked. He doesn't acknowledge any of this, of course, doesn't even speak to her as he rebuilds his shields - but he doesn't need to acknowledge it, because without his shields he's completely transparent and she knows everything he's thinking and feeling. When he's re-armored himself, she lets the shield she'd had around him fade.

Other Q are surrounding them, shocked, absorbing the knowledge of what just happened. He can actually feel an outpouring of sympathy from them, toward him. He _never_ feels large numbers of other Q caring about him or feeling sympathy for him. This is the first time in millions of years. His shields are weak enough from having been smashed by force that they almost buckle under the force of mixed emotions, the gratitude he feels that they care and the humiliation that they know exactly how frightened he was, exactly how badly the others hurt him.

But he holds himself together, hardening and strengthening his shields. "Well?" he asks the audience of Q gathered around him. "Are you just going to gawk at me all day, or is someone actually going to go after those guys?"


	5. Gratitude

Data was in sickbay, half taken apart, Crusher and LaForge working frantically at putting him back together. Q felt awful. At first he'd thought the sick feeling he was experiencing was related to the attack on him, but the shot Crusher gave him - after perfunctorily scanning him, and then turning aside to work on Data immediately afterward as if Q's injuries were so trivial she couldn't spare him a word, and given that _he_ was the one the attack was aimed at, that hardly seemed fair - had at least alleviated the pain in his head and in the places where he'd hit the floor. He was coming to the conclusion that what he was feeling had nothing to do with his human body.

He was alive, and mostly healthy, some bruises aside, but the Calamarain had been after _him_. Data hadn't even existed when he'd played his games with the Calamarain - Data had had nothing to do with it. But Data was dying, and he wasn't.

"If he were mortal, he'd be dead," Crusher was saying, which seemed to him to be an odd way to put it, because of course Data wasn't immortal. Unaging, but far from invulnerable. And that couldn't be right, anyway.

"Now let's not overstate the matter, Doctor," Q said. "I'm mortal, and _I_ survived." Surely Data couldn't be that badly hurt. Q was much more fragile, made of soft, vulnerable meat and bones no stronger than wooden sticks. If Q had lived, surely Data couldn't be in any great danger.

Everyone glared at him as if he'd just made a major faux pas rather than pointing out something that should be both obvious and cheering. They _wanted_ Data to live, right? Shouldn't Q pointing out that his own survival suggested that Data would be fine be something that made them feel better? Apparently not. "Q, you exceed your own standards for self-preoccupation. You have no concern for an officer who may have saved your life."

Both parts of Picard's last sentence were wrong. There was no 'may' about Data's having saved Q's life; he would be dead, right now, if not for Data. He knew that for a fact. And he wasn't unconcerned about Data, either, but he didn't point this out because there was no point to it. Picard would believe what he believed and Q couldn't change that. "He's strong," Q said. "He'll survive." He meant for it to sound like a statement. Instead it came out almost questioning, a hope rather than a belief, as if he still had the power to shape reality with declarative statements of thought and saying it could make it be true. Because if Data died...

Crusher chased everyone out of her sickbay. The guard walking behind Q had only been instructed to escort him, not to escort him anywhere in particular. So Q walked aimlessly, with nowhere to go, unwilling to ask the man following him where he could go because the guard was more robotic and cold than Data had ever been, addressing Q only to tell him in a flat tone when an area was restricted. Q didn't need to be painted a picture. The guard despised him, maybe for what he'd done to the ship in the past, but probably because he was healthy and Data was injured, maybe dying, and it shouldn't be this way.

It wasn't _fair._

The universe wasn't fair. Fairness was a fiction humans came up with to believe they had some control over their lives. He knew that. And yet here he was, human, and fairness didn't seem fictional now. It seemed painfully real. Data had done nothing to deserve being hurt. Data had done a noble thing, a compassionate thing, and if he hadn't...

...If he hadn't, Q would be dead. He had _heard_ the Calamarain discussing with themselves what to do with him, when they'd surrounded him and permeated his skin. His telepathy was gone with all the rest of his Q powers, but either he wasn't completely powerless or anyone who actually understood the Calamarain thought-language would have heard them, if they'd been in physical contact with them like he had been. He'd heard them talking, and what they'd been talking about was how best to kill him.

They'd considered and discarded simply draining his life from him, as they'd tried the first time. It didn't work as well on mortal bodies as it would have on his energy form, if the energy form of a Q hadn't completely outclassed any number of Calamarain in strength and power. They knew they didn't have much time before the shields would be modulated to block them, and they didn't think they could drain his flesh form quickly enough to ensure his death. So they'd been discussing other options. Some of them had wanted to pull him up where the mortals couldn't reach him to ground him, and electrocute him slowly, both because their form of energy couldn't instantly convert into voltage that would kill a human and because they liked the idea of him suffering pain before he died. Others had wanted to do it fast and certain by letting the artificial gravity do their work for them, drag him up to the top of the warp shaft and drop him 100 meters or so, where his fragile human bones and flesh would have shattered and turned to pulp on impact. Another group had wanted to fling him _into_ the warp core, where he'd be instantly vaporized. And some were voting to carry him over to a wall, up high where his feeble mortal limbs could give him no leverage to escape, and slowly crush him to death by pushing him into it until he suffocated or his ribcage shattered or both, mostly because that would cause him even more pain than the electrocution would.

He had been twitching with the electrical shocks they inflicted simply by touching him, trying to scream, to beg them to stop, but nothing had come out but incoherent grunts and cries. In his mind he was screaming, and he knew the Calamarain could hear him, but those few that weren't completely ignoring his mental pleas were laughing at them in sadistic delight. And without being able to control his muscles there was no way he could communicate with the people who might actually feel sufficient sympathy to try to help him. He was paralyzed, and he couldn't even make his mouth work well enough to call for help, and he was going to die. He had _known_ it, had known his existence was over and he had no hope.

And then Data had grabbed him. The energies of the Calamarain had discharged through Data, making the android twitch and writhe. If Q had been able to speak coherently he would have begged Data not to let go, but it hadn't mattered that he couldn't beg, because Data did what Q was silently pleading for anyway, and held on. In that moment, Data had been his lifeline, his savior, the only thing between him and horrible death. His protector. It was absurd that a Q should _need_ a protector, but he wasn't a Q anymore, and he did.

And then the Calamarain were gone, and he'd fallen to the floor, hard, wind knocked out of him. Everyone had surrounded Data, rushing to his aid and all but ignoring Q, even though Q had been the target of the attack. At first Q had been indignant, until it sank in, gradually, that somehow, Data was actually seriously _hurt._ That it wasn't just that everyone liked Data and no one liked him; it was because the attack had done far, far more damage to Data than to him.

It wasn't _fair._ Data had saved his life. He shouldn't be dying or critically injured for it.

Intellectually Q knew that was stupid. Altruism and compassion were weaknesses precisely because they led people to do things like save other people's lives at their own expense. Data had done something stupid, had charged in to rescue Q without considering the impact the Calamarain's energies might have on his positronic net, and now he was hurt and maybe dying because that was how the universe rewarded stupidity, and that should be all there was to it. Q should be feeling pleased that the android had been stupid enough to take that risk on his behalf, not... not _guilty_. He shouldn't have felt like it should have been him just because he had actually been the target and Data's act had been one of compassion. He shouldn't feel like the universe had any sense of balance, any karma, any inherent justice that was disrupted here. He knew better. The universe was built on positive feedback loops and endless spirals up and down, where power gravitated to power and the weak were punished for weakness. He shouldn't feel like what had happened here was _wrong._

But he did.

The Q did not owe debts. Doing a favor for another Q was a way of getting power over that Q. The idea of acting out of pure altruism was, well not _alien_ to the Q exactly, but pure altruism was what you offered to inferior beings, and then only if you wanted them to worship you, and you never risked your _life_ for them. Or for anyone else. The worship of lesser beings couldn't be enjoyed if you lost your immortal life to gain it, and you couldn't collect the debt another Q would owe you if what you did for them cost you your life. There was very little that _could_ kill a Q, of course, but it was very unlikely that anyone would brave the few dangers that did exist simply to help another Q.

But Data had risked his life for Q. And might have lost it.

Q owed him, now, more than he could possibly ever repay, because he wasn't an engineer, he couldn't fix Data, and if Data lived through this he was so much stronger and faster and more durable than Q that Q would never be able to pay him back in kind, and if he died then obviously Q couldn't repay him. And he couldn't exactly worship Data, and an emotionless android would have no use for worship anyway. And Q thought that beings who wanted worship were losers, so he would think less of Data if Data _had_ wanted such a thing.

The weight of his gratitude, and his guilt, were crushing him. The Q didn't leave debts unpaid. The universe was a monstrously unfair machine and they all knew it, but they also knew that a society of sentient beings could only function if debts between entities were honored. A Q who didn't repay favors would be ostracized, and would end up losing his powers... which meant Q should feel fine about welching on a debt, because he _had_ just lost his powers and what did it matter anymore if he obeyed the ethics of the Q? But he couldn't get rid of beliefs he'd held for billions of years just because they no longer applied so well now. Tormenting mortals was a mildly socially irresponsible pastime, but failing to repay a debt would make him a terrible, worthless person.

And it wasn't as if Q had rejected the debt and Data had forced it on him anyway. Yes, he hadn't been able to say the words, to actually vocalize to Data how badly he wanted Data to save him... but he'd thought it, and among the Q it was the thought that counted.

He leaned heavily against the bulkhead, unable to escape the feeling that he _should_ have said no somehow, that he should have somehow prevented Data from risking himself, even though logically he'd had no more way to do that than he'd had to save himself. But it wasn't fair. Data was unaging, unlike this mortal sack of protoplasm Q was now bound to; he could potentially live thousands of years, and he might have just thrown it away so Q could eke out probably less than a century more. And Data had friends who would mourn him, and Data had a place where he belonged, and Data had a life he fit into, a life he understood that gave him satisfaction. Q had lost all of those things, and he was miserable, and he hated being human, and he was starting to hate himself. In the moment when the Calamarain had been about to kill him, he would have done anything to live, but now that the crisis was over, Q realized that he really didn't _want_ to live all that badly. Not like this. Not if it meant owing debts to people who died or got hurt for him, and he'd never be able to repay them, and the fact that the person who was hurt or dying had a happier and more satisfying life, with a greater potential lifespan and a lot more people who'd suffer for his death, only made the imbalance worse. Data had risked something that was worth a great deal, his own life, for Q's life, and Q's life... wasn't worth very much. Not right now.

And then he drew a sharp breath, as he realized something he should have understood all along.

The Enterprise couldn't save both the Bre'el IV moon and him. Every time they tried to push the moon, they'd have to drop shields. Sooner or later, the Calamarain would get frustrated at these tiny meat creatures' insistence on standing between them and their revenge, and they'd destroy the ship instead of targeting Q personally. They'd been right there at the warp core. An electrical discharge into the computers controlling the core, or better yet and quicker, a magnetic flux against the force field holding the Enterprise's antimatter supply. And all these people would be dead, because they'd agreed to give Q shelter, and the fact that he'd be dead too would make their sacrifice monstrously pointless.

If they sacrificed Bre'el IV, if they put up shields and ran, they'd survive. But what was it Picard had said? Millions of lives, down there on the planet, threatened by this falling moon? How would Q ever even begin to pay back _that_ debt? His entire mortal existence wouldn't be long enough, and it wouldn't matter anyway because you couldn't repay the dead. Doing good works for people who weren't dead didn't actually discharge your debt to other people who were.

If he hadn't felt so worthless, and helpless, and lonely, maybe he wouldn't have seen it. He was good at denying reality and rationalizing things when it was convenient for him. Maybe he'd have convinced himself that there was another solution... or just managed to not see the problem, like he'd managed to not see it up until now. But his whole world was empty. He didn't belong to anyone. No one wanted him. No one cared if he lived or died. The Q had thrown him out, the Enterprise tolerated him only grudgingly, and the Calamarain wanted him dead. Only Data had shown him kindness and acceptance, only Data had protected him... and Data was lying in sickbay for it.

It fit. He turned his idea this way and that, absorbing it. The fear, the grief - what Picard would have probably called self-pity, but what were you supposed to feel when you knew you had to die? - they were more bearable than the blackness of his mood and the horrible voice in his head chanting at him that it should have been him. He hated living like this. He was already overwhelmed with fear and grief over the loss of his powers and the uncertainty of his future, and the guilt over what had happened to Data was breaking him. He didn't want to die... but he didn't want to live like _this,_ either. And he owed Data an impossible debt, and without his powers this was the only way to pay it back.

With his security escort, he headed toward the bridge to talk to Picard. He didn't _want_ this. He hated this existence, but even still, he didn't want to die. Maybe Picard would say or do something that helped him see a way out, some alternative to doing what he thought, now, he would inevitably have to do.

But if there wasn't any other way... then he knew what he had to do. There wasn't any way to pay Data back except to save his life - or to save the lives of his friends and the ship he'd been loyal to, if he died of his injuries. And the fact was, Q's continued existence aboard this ship was a threat to Data and everyone aboard. The only way to save Data, the only way to pay him back, was to remove himself from the sanctuary of the ship.

The Calamarain would kill him. He had no doubt of that. They could travel at high warp; the Enterprise's shuttles couldn't outrun them, and fleeing to the planet would just bring angry plasma beings down into the atmosphere of innocent beings who were already terrorized enough by the impending fall of their moon. There was nowhere Q could go, once he'd left the ship, no way to outrun the Calamarain and nowhere he could flee to. If he left the ship, if he freed them of the burden of protecting him, it meant his death.

But that would be better than how he felt now, standing by as Data suffered on his behalf and feeling as if there was nothing he could ever do to repay the debt.

Funny. The humans thought of gratitude as a positive emotion. Something benevolent. They had no idea that gratitude could hurt so much that someone would choose death to escape the burden.


End file.
